the fundamentals of planning
the fundamentals of planning
At Media, Marketing & Effectiveness Vancouver, we welcomed Dan White, an acclaimed author and marketer who brought his British charm and wit to the stage while sharing insights from his latest work, The Smart Advertising Book.
Dan’s presentation, peppered with his signature illustrations, expertly covered many essential marketing principles, including topics like advertising investment strategies, media selection, and tips for creating effective video advertising.
Be sure to watch the full presentation for its valuable overview of key marketing principles, but here are a few key takeaways:
- Why advertise? Because it delivers results. There are lots of factors that influence advertising ROI—starting with brand size, distribution, and creative quality—but the average return is 2.43 per WARC. In other words, for every $100 invested in advertising, you can expect (an average) profit uplift of $243.
- There are two primary roles of advertising, purchase activation and brand building. Purchase activation is about reminding people of the brand and triggering them to choose it at just the right time and place when they’re buying the category. Brand building is about future demand, establishing the brand as something that people easily recognize, and comes to mind when they’re thinking about buying the category. This is often referred to as building ‘mental availability’, and is especially important for long term growth. Successful brands understand you need to balance both purchase activation and brand building activities.
- When deciding what media to choose, there are several important factors to consider: the reach that can be achieved, the level of attention the channel delivers, and the cost per exposure to your target audience.
- Fun Fact: only 15% of all ad exposures last for more than 2.5 seconds. This is important because the longer people spend with an ad, the more likely they are to be affected by it. There is a great Lumen Research chart in the presentation that illustrates the impact of a longer dwell time, so bear that in mind when choosing your media: will my audience see the ad for more than 2 seconds?
- It will not surprise you that Cinema and TV have the highest attention levels, while social media feeds and digital display ads have the lowest.
- When it comes to TV advertising, not only does it deliver mass reach and attention, it also has a significant impact on other channels, making those channels more effective.
- When it comes to creative, sound makes a huge impact—but of course not all media is consumed with sound on: Facebook and Instagram have the highest levels of “sound off” activities, while TV and Cinema have the lowest.
- Back to the value of advertising: Why should you keep advertising? Because without it, your sales will drastically decline—perhaps not immediately, but eventually. The Ehrenberg Bass Institute found that if a brand stops advertising, sales typically halve within just 5 years. In any competitive category in which most brands invest in advertising, you simply cannot afford to cut your spend if you want to remain competitive.
For more, including the illustrative examples, watch the presentation.
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media, marketing & effectiveness Vancouver |
speaker
DAN WHITE
marketer, market research, and acclaimed author
His career includes a decade as an insights professional, another as a brand advisor and a third as a Chief Marketing Officer.
Dan co-developed BRANDZ, the world’s biggest brand equity measurement system and his thinking has shaped the design of leading copy test and brand tracking methodologies. As a brand and communications guru, he has advised famous, billion-dollar brands on how to thrive.
Today, Dan’s goal is to make the best marketing knowledge accessible to everyone. His four best-selling books, and hundreds of distinctive, hand-drawn visualizations have earned praise from luminaries in the marketing, advertising, and media industries.